Coastal Cruising and Oregon Musing

Well its been a while hasn't it. I hope everyone has enjoyed the pictures I posted in Portland. It takes forever to post these guys, so I may have to leave the pics off until the end of our trip. Instead I'll give you guys a good rundown of what's been going down for the past 300 miles or so of our ride down the Oregon coast:

We arrived in Portland by bus from Astoria and were picked up by our friend from Vandy, Scott. He had to be at work that day so he just picked us up and left us his car keys to go check out some of downtown. As luck would have it, we got into Portland the weekend of the Oregon Brewer's Festival! Apparently that was going on the same weekend Nashville's Brewer's Festival was happening, so basically the only thing I really miss about Nashville this trip is the people. We made our way downtown and got lunch at the Saturday market. Finally the sweet taste of lamb and tzaziki which I'd been craving for a week satisfied my hunger pains. From there we went to the OBF. They do it a bit differently than Nashville: its free to get in, but if you want to drink you have to buy the mug and tokens which give you a taste of the beer, or for four, you get a full mug. A buck a token seemed reasonable enough, and the mugs were free from Scott and Zach's(another Vandy friend) journey there the day before. Next we stumbled to Powell's used book store, which takes up a whole city block, and walked around there a bit. We went to Scott's brew pub and checked out his operation, and met up with him for dinner after that. The next day he showed us around to the Rose garden, and some old growth forests in the city, and we boarded our bus back to Astoria. While driving around we were listening to public radio and they were doing the show out of Nashville, which made us all reminisce a little.

We woke up the next day in Astoria, and retrieved our bikes from the bike shop and set off south along the coast. The riding was really nice, and the coast was absolutely beautiful. The first night we stayed in Barview Jetty county park, where we watched the sun set in the Pacific Ocean. The next day we rode past Tillamook and stopped off for some ice cream, and started a few of the tougher climbs of our trip. Just my luck that we were on a rather tough climb when my clipless pedal broke. Clipless pedals are the kind that require special shoes and let you clip into the pedal (don't worry about the seeming contradiction in the naming here) which helps you pull up as well as push down on the pedal. It was either 20 miles back or 60 miles forward so we decided to roll on. We stopped in the first town we saw, Pacific City to try to see if I could catch the bus to Tillamook where there was a bike shop. It would have been awful timing either way, so we just decided to keep rolling on. The next day was a bitch and without being able to clip in and orient my legs properly, MY knee started bothering me rather intensely. It was stinging a bit earlier in the trip, but after these hills, it was definitely worrisome. We arrived in Newport ready for a day off, not because of the knee, but because Newport is the world headquarters of the Rogue Brewery.

We really should have just kept going, because our experience there was awful. The night we got in, we went down to the brew pub for a bite to eat, and some fresh beers. As one guy put it "it was the worst dining experience of my life." It took us almost an hour to get our beer, which came out without any head and rather flat, tasted worse than in the bottles, and cost $5.75 a pint! An outrage that was magnified by the fact that we had paid $3.50 a pint for Dead Guy Ales the day before 50 miles up the coast! The food was okay and understandably overpriced, but we spent about 2-3 hours in the restaraunt for the whole meal. People were leaving left and right. The next day we went to the Aquarium, which was really fucking cool. I got some sweet pics there. After we went on the Rogue brewery tour, which was rather dull, and led by a really poorly informed sales rep, who knew more about the price schemes of the beer than what went into making it. For a brewery that has a red star in its logo, they're pretty damn concerned about their bottom line. Apparently they get complaints about cost a lot, because that's all they would talk about: "Oh we don't advertise, so we have to pay for our beer somehow" (right, and if you don't run ads, shouldn't it be cheaper?) "Well Miller uses about 20lbs of ingredients per batch, and Sierra Nevada uses 40, but we use 65!" (yea and Sierra Nevada makes better beers, and still charges less!) Since I'll have plenty of other delicious, but cost effective options for beer where I'm moving, I'm never buying Rogue beer again.

Fueled by dissapointment we rode off from Newport and rode about 75 miles to right outside Reedsport where Dune Fest kept us awake in our otherwise perfect campsite. I didn't know this either, but along Oregon's coast line just south of Florence there is a big stretch of sand dunes, and every year all of the region's rednecks descend on Dunes City and Reedsport for a good ol fashioned beer drinking, four-wheel riding, hoot and hollering good time.

The next day we rode about 50 miles to right outside of Bandon, a very charming town. A quick comment here about Oregon state parks, which had been our home for a majority of the journey through Oregon: they're awesome. The parks have $4 hiker-biker sites, which are always available, despite the otherwise full campground. The showers are free and have excellent water pressure. And we've also met some really excellent fellow bikers in these sites.

From Bandon we decided to make it a rather short day: only 30 or so miles, to Humbug Mt right outside of Port Orford, where I am now. I'm getting a bit concerned about my knee, and the hill for the next couple of days have certainly scared me off the road for now. Its really not that bad, but its enough to make me modest about our goals and my abilities. Either way, we're making great time, and should be in California the day after tomorrow! All in all, I think we're about 10 days from San Francisco. What we'll do then, is a good question, but we've talked about touring wine country, or finishing the rest of the Coast down to San Diego. This trip has been one amazing, exhilirating experience, and I can't imagine going a day without biking.